Montana Sky

Nora Roberts

Jack Mercy had three wives and three daughters. He divorced the first two and they left with his daughters and his blessing. The only reason he didn't divorce his third wife was because she died before he could, leaving him with a baby to raise. He didn't want daughters so Willa Mercy was raised by the housekeeper and the ranch hands on the Mercy cattle ranch in Montana.

Jack Mercy was mean and disliked by almost everyone who knew him. He had one final jab. When he died, he left the ranch to all three daughters if they lived together for a year on the ranch. The older two, Tessa and Lily, had left when they were small. None of the women had ever met.

Now they are stuck together for a year if they want to inherit. Willa just wants the ranch. Tessa wants to go back to her life in Los Angeles as a script writer. Lily wants to hide out from an abusive, stalking ex-husband. Willa refuses to bend to either of her half sisters. She feels they've done nothing to inherit the ranch. She is the one who always tried to please their father even if he didn't care.

Jack Mercy left a final catch on the inheritance. They have to have two men as overseers for the first year to make sure the ranch is run properly. Both are neighbors - Nate, the horse rancher and lawyer, and Ben, whose family ranch is larger than Mercy. Adam, Willa's half brother on her mother's side, was left a small percentage of the ranch and he stays to support his sister as well as is one of the best horse trainers in Montana.

Someone has a grievance either against Mercy ranch or against the Mercy sisters. Within days after a funeral a steer is found slaughtered and gutted. More animals in the same condition or worse appear over the next few months. Then one of the ranch hands is in the wrong place and is also killed, gutted, and scalped. Someone appears to be trying to drive the sisters out, ruining the Mercy ranch. But more people's lives are in danger. Are one or all of the Mercy sisters the next targets in this vendetta?

Montana Sky is a well crafted suspense novel. I had already seen the movie on Lifetime, so I knew "who done it". Yet the book captures the unease and fear that surrounds the home. The men are well characterized. Lily is also described well and comes to life, and Tessa is close. Willa, although the most central character, is glossed over all too often early in the novel as surly and focused. By the end she is pulled together and made more real.

Despite the character flaws (pun intended) Nora Roberts did a good job with Montana Sky. The countryside descriptions make the reader want to go up and see it for her/himself. (But the description of winter keeps me from wanting to live there!) The romances are obvious and well handled. Each woman needs something different from a man and each man understands the woman he has chosen. This is good storytelling.

Notice: Explicit sexual content, Non-graphic violence,

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